New York Regents hold off on plan to require a research paper for high school graduation

View full sizeMichelle Diegoli, an 11th-grader at Nottingham High School in Syracuse, takes a test in this March photo.Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com

The state Board of Regents decided today not to give the green light to a proposal to make a five-page research paper a requirement for high school graduation.

The state Education Department had asked the Regents to move toward approving the plan at its June meeting. Instead the Regents decided to take more time and discuss the matter further in June.

The proposal would require students to write a 1,250-word paper -- called the Regents Research Paper -- to qualify to take the English language arts Regents exam. The exam, usually taken at the end of the junior year, is a graduation requirement.

Current freshmen would be the first students affected by the requirement. They are scheduled to take the ELA exam in the spring of 2015.

The Education Department says the requirement would fit in well with the state's new Common Core standards. The standards are intended to ensure that students can succeed in the kind of work demanded in college and in their careers.

The department says the kinds of critical thinking and writing skills required in writing a research paper are difficult to demonstrate during an exam because of time constraints.

The paper would have to be in English and would have to draw from at least four "informational" nonfiction texts. School districts would be encouraged to develop guidelines for papers that exceeded the minimum requirements.

The Education Department said it would develop accommodations for students for whom English is a second language and for students with disabilities.

The requirement would not be a major obstacle in most schools, one Central New York superintendent said today.

“I don’t see it as any big deal,” said Chris Brown, leader of the West Genesee district. “It’s something that our students would generally do anyway in some way, shape or form.”

Carl Korn, spokesman for the state’s largest teachers union, New York State United Teachers, said the idea could be a step forward – because it would show whether a student could do an authentic research and writing task.

“The idea that students would be exposed to research and would be required to write a detailed, thought-filled, document-citing paper would be a very good thing,” he said.

But he said the success of the idea would come in the state’s implementation of it.

If the paper is written at home, he said, would it put students who don’t have a computer or the Internet at a disadvantage? Conversely, if it were done during school hours, how much time would it take away from classroom teaching?

Korn also questioned how much time the grading of the papers would take, and whether teachers would be allowed to grade their own students’ papers or would be required to grade someone else’s.